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AOL's idea is that sometimes it's just too complicated to use the Web -- not intellectually but physically. AOL Interactive Services chief Ted Leonsis says the service originated when he couldn't get in touch with his office, or check his e-mail, while driving on a business trip eight months ago. It's not as if Leonsis is a computerphobe who can't, or won't, get Web information the usual way. But in airports, hotel rooms and such, it can be easier to dial 800 AOL-1234 to get basic services like e-mail, stock quotes, and news updates, which a synthesized voice reads to you. AOL by Phone is designed as a niche service for people who already use AOL -- and who will continue to log on, most of the time, via a computer. It's available only to AOL subscribers (but not just those using the new AOL 6.0) and costs an extra $4.95 a month after a free trial lasting through January 31, 2001. LIMITED OPTIONS. Compared to similar services from Yahoo (YHOO), Tellme Networks, and others, AOL by Phone falls somewhere in the middle. The voice-portal market is extremely immature and still very much in search of a mix of services -- let alone a business model. Like Yahoo, AOL believes that what people want most from a voice service is the ability to connect with their home base from remote locations. At both AOL and Yahoo, which announced Yahoo by Phone on Oct. 10, the hallmark of the service is the ability to have your e-mail read to you. On top of that, AOL provides stock quotes, weather, and very basic news. How basic? Well, there's not even any business news available: The only categories of news are headlines, politics, sports, health, and entertainment. In the Finance section, stock quotes are available, but I couldn't find the story, for example, about Nortel earnings that this week sent the telecom-equipment maker's shares reeling. So while I could learn Nortel was off almost $20 a share, I couldn't discover why. If I had to rely on AOL by Phone, that would make me pretty nervous. On balance, AOL by Phone does the right things -- just not very well. Voice recognition is pretty shaky -- it read me a quote for Portal Software when I asked for Nortel, and asked if I'd said "Geoworks" when I spelled out the ticker symbol for Corvis Corp. (I'd said "C-O-R-V," which apparently sounds like Geoworks). And that was when I called from a quiet office. Accurate voice recognition is much harder to achieve when the call is coming from a train station, airport, or restaurant filled with background noise. Other problems: To give stock quotes without easy access to an equally wide array of business news is to deliver information without context. Sticking with my Nortel example, I should have been able to say "News" during my Nortel quote and be delivered to the earnings report -- not the main menu for news headlines. And the news features suffer from a lack of interactivity that I found striking. Ask AOL by Phone for political news, for example, and it plays a prerecorded, radio-like spiel. Nor could I get the system to skip to the second story if the first headline was of no interest. Why couldn't I just say "next" and go to the next story in the news summary? GLITCHES AND BUGS. Worst of all was the inflexibility in AOL by Phone's e-mail delivery. My AOL account has four different screen names, but I couldn't figure out how to move from one to another in AOL by Phone. AOL's basic service is set up so that each account has a lead screen name, usually controlled by a parent to administer a family membership and several auxiliary names, each of which can have its own e-mail address. The result was that AOL by Phone let me get e-mail from they master account -- actually my wife's personal e-mail address) but not from my own e-mailbox. Nor was there a command similar to the AOL flagship service's "Change Screen Name" command that would have let me access my own mailbox. And when I went back to check whether this was my mistake -- the possibility that I had set up the service incorrectly when registering via computer -- typing the "AOL by Phone" keyword delivered me to a page where I could register only for the service, not check or change the parameters I'd already set up. For a company that prides itself on making its service easy to understand and use, AOL is going to want to tweak this. While other voice-based services are built around their ability to help travelers find restaurants, taxis, and the like in cities not their own, AOL is probably correct that the thing business travelers need most from this service is the ability to stay in touch with their base. Ultimately, some mix of AOL by Phone's traits with those of Tellme or BeVocal will produce the blend that makes voice portals a useful supplement to the Web -- a convenience so ubiquitous people will use them without considering them remarkable. But to be especially useful or popular, the execution has to be better than in this early version of AOL by Phone. Mullaney covers e-business for Business Week in New York |
